Like the previous small paintings, this happened so fast there was no natural space for photo stages and my initial pencil drawings (from the photographs) were too light to see. So this is somewhere in the late middle of the process where I have the shape settled and I’m laying down some initial patches of form and colour. Again, I’m using water soluble oils which have a lovely buttery texture – or maybe margerine-y would be a better reference, given its imposter relationship to actual butter. In practical terms, drying takes about as long as my acrylics usually did because I use these in much thinner layers.

The canvas is 6×8″, which means I really can’t faff over details because I can’t see them well enough to notice, except from a distance. Then I take a metaphorical run at the painting to squint at the area in question and make adjustments. Mostly this has been perspectives and lines, which become more obvious in the whole image than the detail.

I used a mucky mix of dilute orange and some pink that ran into it on the palette as an initial wash.

The final image is the result of layering, leaving, mixing, and wiping paint to leave a smooth visual surface with areas of light in the sky and the river and a small counter-point of light in the window on the left. The view is towards the southwest so this is where the light lingers the longest.

There’s a lot about this piece that marks a new direction for me. The first element of this is the size, and I came to it by simply messing around with tiny canvases because I hate to waste them. Up to now, doing this has not led to any progress, but this time feels different and again I’m referencing Sky Arts LAOTY which I’m bingeing from the beginning. After eight seasons, I’m better able to stand back and ‘see’ the process without quite yet being able to make my own. It feels close, though, and, as always, it’s less about learning techniques, although that is bound to happen at an unconscious level, than it is about a meta-analysis of the whole. What are the artists saying, how are they looking at their work, what are their aims and how much do aims matter? Increasingly I’m noticing behavioural details such as talking to one of the hosts and almost distractedly, applying one brush stroke to something that had caught their attention as being in need of adjustment. Almost all of them start big and work towards small, the exceptions seeming to be people who are or have been graphic designers.

To compare painting with writing, I know with full confidence that if I need to write something, I can largely just sit down and do it. I know it will come. There’s a kind of cognitive distance that isolates that part of my thinking and makes it easier to assemble both the words and the ideas with relative ease. I don’t have that yet with painting, but now that I’ve identified this as a creative phase, I can look out for any signs of it beginning to appear. With any luck, it’s a transferable skill!

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2025